Posts Tagged ‘peak coach’

It’s not that uncommon for us to come across family members in family businesses that have an unrealistic sense of their abilities and impact. However, this can have a detrimental effect on the business as well as on the person living a bit of a… delusional life.

I have seen this many times. It happens for a couple of reasons. First of all, many family members assume greatness due to their name and lineage. It’s easy to see how that can happen. They grow up hearing stories about the founder’s vision, tenacity and accomplishments and they kind of fall into the trap of assuming all of those qualities were bestowed upon them at birth. We know that’s rarely the case.

The second reason it can happen is that deep down someone has a sense of insecurity, and so they overcompensate by acting as if they are the superstar, when in fact they are not.

These situations have far reaching implications to the family business. I’ve seen family members heading up key parts of the family business such as sales or finance, when they don’t have great skills in those areas. Having an underperformer in any area of a business can be potentially fatal to the business. Additionally, having an underperformer in a key role can be disheartening to other members of the team.

When you combine that situation with someone strutting around like a superstar, when in fact they are an underperformer, the effect can be downright embarrassing.

If you work with us at all, you will know that all of our family business coaching revolves around creating role definitions and results based upon the best practices of great companies.

Many family business people have convinced themselves they are great based upon their own scorecard. When we bring objectivity and business best practice measurements to the situation, it creates an opening for honest dialogue about improving family business performance.

Let’s go back to the underperformer. You want to create a safe, non-threatening environment where people embrace honesty and performance improvement. Lots of people kid themselves about their greatness, but strong, healthy family businesses face performance head on in healthy and objective ways.

Find a way to steer the family toward looking at performance, based upon best practices, and you will be on the way to improving the situation. Sometimes as coaches we can say things to people that no one else can say to them.

Posted by Pete Walsh

Wednesday, October 16th, 2013

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Yesterday was one of those days that gave me great joy as a family business coach! Part of our process is to teach families how to have quarterly reviews of goals and business results.

At yesterday’s session, Dad was courageously giving feedback to the team. There are a few things about this that are really exciting.

First of all, this father, like many others, found himself reluctant, uncomfortable and somewhat ineffective at giving feedback to his offspring. What happens in most cases like this is that little or no feedback is given and results many times aren’t on track, and therefore resentment builds on both sides of the equation.

The second great point was, not only was dad putting himself out there giving feedback, the feedback he was giving was pretty darn good! (We still have some work to do J.) In the past when he tried to give feedback, it often missed the mark or caused unhealthy reactions from the recipients.

The third thing that was exciting was to see his son taking the feedback like a professional getting feedback from the chairman of the board (vs. getting scolded by Dad). That hasn’t always been the case. In the past when dad tried to give feedback, the sons, in many cases, had emotional reactions and found themselves defending and justifying their behaviors.

In this particular session, the son took the feedback head on and head held high. No shriveling, shrinking or walking away hurt and upset. In fact, this son did the beautiful job of saying, “Thank you for that feedback. Can you be more specific about what you saw exactly?”

I have to admit there was a certain amount of heat and discomfort as the discussion moved forward but it’s my job as a family business coach to remind the team that the discomfort represents building new muscle and makes them stronger as a team.

This all came as a result of this family’s dedication to practice, practice, practice! It’s how all great teams become great teams, and stay great teams.

Afterwards I called mom and let her know about the great progress. The reason I did that was mom, with her new found courage, pulled me aside last month and told me to be tougher on dad! I absolutely love that we are all pushing each other to help this family business achieve greatness and long-term success!

Posted by Pete Walsh

Friday, October 11th, 2013

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I spent most of my childhood thinking that I would spend my entire career in our family business and hopefully someday run the family business. It didn’t quite turn out that way and, when it’s all said and done, I love the way it turned out. Don’t think that you can know the way life will turn out. Stay open and optimistic and flexible about your life.

You can be miserable in the family business or any career for that matter.

I was so convinced a lot of my professional frustration was because of family dynamics. When I got out and started doing business coaching in the business world I realized frustration happens because of style differences, value differences and being in the wrong j-o-b. It’s not always about a family member mistreating you. It’s about you figuring out how to get along with lots of different types of people in lots of different kinds of situations.

If you’re unhappy do something about it or move on don’t just stay and be miserable.

I haven’t come across any family member in the family business that is physically chained to their desk. Yet I work with a lot of family business participants that act like they don’t have a choice in the matter. Get to work figuring out how to make yourself happy, change the situation or Move On life’s too short to SUFFER in a family business!

Make the most of your situation.

I spent 16 years in our family business and took it upon myself to learn how to be a strong business professional and leader. I was fortunate that we had a very professionally run family business and it gave me the opportunity to build a strong identity and confidence as a business professional. Every family business situation has its problems. Find a way to make the most out of your situation and use it to make the most out of your career and your personal happiness. I took my experience and decided to start a new career that built upon all the great experience I acquired.

Keep learning how to separate family and business.

This was something we were pretty good at as a family. People often say to me, how can you possibly separate personal from business, you can’t. Like many things that we teach it’s all about mindset. Business owners and leaders make business decisions. They don’t always sit perfectly with you from a personal standpoint and not accepting that is doing yourself, your family and your family business a disservice. Sure if you think people are making decisions to cause you harm, I guess you should take it personally. In the majority of cases I’ve seen, business owners are trying to make what they believe are good business decisions and other family members refuse to see that.

At the end of the day, get outside advisers and trusted business professionals to help you have objectivity about what’s going on. You need to get further away than just your old family cronies that had been helping you for years. You need new sets of eyes that have not been related to your family forever.

In conclusion, life’s too short to suffer in your family business. Do whatever you can to begin to make the situation better or build your path to leaving the business.

Posted by Pete Walsh

Wednesday, October 9th, 2013

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